teacher, researcher, life-long learner

Educational Policy Implementation

Typically, studies of educational policy focus on measuring the effects of a policy. However, I am interested in the process of a policy: how does a legislation, a piece of writing, or a program become something? I gather that important, but often missed, factors are the ultimate “users” of a policy: teachers, parents, and students, for example. I typically use “neo-institutional” (Powell & Colyvas, 2008) and interpretive/sense-making (Spillane, 2004; Yanow, 2000) theories to frame this work, as such perspectives highlight the central role of “cultural scripts”—meta-narratives, discourses, or major “storylines” (Hamann, 2011)—in developing policies/organizations.

My research questions in this area include: How does public discourse shape the implementation of new bilingual education policies? How do federal accountability policies shape schooling at the local level? How do elementary-aged children understand their schools’ classroom policies?

Publications:

Dorner, L., Crawford, E., Jennings, J., Sandoval O. & Hager, E. (2017). I think immigrants “kind of fall into two camps:” Boundary work by U.S.-born community members in St. Louis, Missouri. Educational Policy.

Dorner, L. (2015). From global jobs to safe spaces: The diverse discourses that sell multilingual schooling in the U.S. Current Issues in Language Planning, 16(1&2), 114-131.

Dorner, L. (2015.) From relating to (re)presenting: Challenges and lessons learned from an ethnographic study with young children. Qualitative Inquiry, 21(4), 354–365.

Dorner, L. (2010). English and Spanish “para un futuro” or just English? Immigrant family perspectives on two-way immersion. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13(3), 303-323.